


don't be shy (don't think too much)

by w_anderingheart



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Humor, M/M, No Smut, i lov suchen, suho as a tattoo artist mmmmmhm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7831405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_anderingheart/pseuds/w_anderingheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joonmyun’s got a bit of a reputation as the best tattoo artist in the city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't be shy (don't think too much)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the criticalcapture fic exchange! (Posted [here](http://criticalcapture.livejournal.com/27588.html).) Original post date: 2015/09/24.
> 
> Title is from the song Don't Be Shy by Primary.

On Monday morning, Joonmyun is running late. He swings open the shop door with one hand, other hand balancing a plastic cup of black coffee.

“It looks like a dick, Sehun.”

“It’s not a dick, it’s a sword!”

Joonmyun slides into his chair at the front desk with a little sigh and sips his coffee carefully. He keeps a binder full of new sketches he hasn’t yet perfected and there are a few designs he needs to work on. Across the room, Jongin is pointing a broomstick at Sehun accusingly. Typical Monday. “When is someone going to want a sword tattooed to their skin anyways?”

Sehun grabs the broomstick out of Jongin’s hands and pokes him in the side with the blunt tip. “Uh, there are a lot of Game of Thrones fans out there, you know,” he argues.

“Whatever, it’s still a dick.”

There is only one client scheduled this morning, Huang Zitao who is booked under Yifan, so Joonmyun helps Jongin and Sehun tidy the shop. He takes inventory of their tattoo machines and ink, and they throw out paper after paper of abandoned sketches. Yifan comes in at ten and starts setting up for his client.

“Oh, hyung, you got a call, by the way. Just before you came in,” Jongin says. He huffs a bit as he lifts a box of office supplies from a shelf in the back room. Joonmyun is the eldest, but he’s also the shortest which isn’t really good boss material, but Jongin and Sehun respect him anyways. Sort of.

“It’s a client. I scheduled them in for tomorrow afternoon, but he said his request is going to be quite elaborate so he’ll need several sessions,” Jongin continues.

“Sure, okay,” says Joonmyun. They carry out the boxes of supplies into the main room, and the front door opens. Zitao strides in, in all his leather-clad, perfumed glory and Joonmyun throws him a smile.

“Hey, Tao,” he greets, as Zitao waves at him fondly, though he’s already walking off towards the spot Yifan has set up for their session. He’s running his fingers gently across the bumps of his knuckles, over the small hand tattoos Joonmyun inked on for him last year.

Sehun appears at Joonmyun’s side, resting his arm on Joonmyun’s shoulder. “I think he’s gay,” he comments, not even quietly, and Joonmyun flicks his apprentice in the forehead.

“ _Please_ be louder,” Joonmyun drawls, unboxing a pack of fresh pencils.

“Oh, come on,” Sehun rolls his eyes. He has an interesting tattoo running along his collarbone, a strange pattern of Chinese characters, and the ink peeks just above the top of his shirt. “Look at the way he looks at Yifan! Why do you think he’s always requesting for him specifically?”

“Everyone has their preference,” Joonmyun points out with a frown.

“Yeah, and Zitao’s is of the male variety, clearly.”

Joonmyun pokes at the tip of a pencil, tentatively, before placing it in a cup on his desk, face-up. “Would that be a problem, if that was true?”

There’s a short pause that’s filled in by Zitao’s high-pitched laughter. Yifan has cracked an inaudible joke as he rolls on his latex gloves. 

“‘Course not,” Sehun says, after a while, shrugging. “I think Jongin keeps staring at my ass, anyways. And I’m cool with it.”

Jongin scoffs from the sketching desk beside Joonmyun’s. “Excuse you, but I hate you _and_ your ass.”

 

 

Joonmyun’s tattoo parlour is a modest sized shop tucked between a sandwich place and a dry cleaners, standing rather unimposingly with its fresh, white exterior. The windows are kept clean and the sign above the door is touched up to make sure it doesn’t chip, and if you didn’t live in the area, you probably wouldn’t know it’s a tattoo parlour.

You probably wouldn’t know it’s the best in the city.

On the outside, it looks like a smoothie shack or something but clients come from out of town, out of state sometimes, to get work done here. It’s all word-of-mouth, though, so it took a few years before Joonmyun built up a reputation. But since then, he’s had his fair share of patrons—excited teenagers, adults in their mid-life crisis, discreet celebrities, nervous first-timers. All of them leave content.

“Hey, hyung. Client is here,” Jongin tells Joonmyun, Tuesday afternoon when the shop is empty and Sehun feels the need to blast Girls’ Generation.

“You can bring him back,” Joonmyun replies. He’s already set up, seated in his chair, tattoo machine in hand. Jongin nods, and runs off. The shop is small, but not incredibly small. It has an entrance area, and a waiting room of sorts where Joonmyun lets Jongin and Sehun hang up designs on the walls for people to look through. Beside the waiting area, is where Yifan works. Then there are two back rooms, one for storage and the larger one for Joonmyun. Unlike Yifan, Joonmyun sort of prefers the quiet.

Jongin comes back with the client, showing him inside before heading back to the front to yell at Sehun. (“Turn off the SNSD, butthole!”) Joonmyun swivels in his seat when he hears a shuffling behind him.

“You’re Kim Jongdae?” asks Joonmyun, motioning with an arm towards the reclining chair. The man nods and takes a seat, folding his legs with a little difficulty. His pants are dark and look way too tight for his legs. Joonmyun swivels back around in his chair.

“I did, like, a ton of research to find the best in the city,” Jongdae says. His voice is light and thin, leaving a strange, tinkling sensation down Joonmyun’s neck. “People have amazing reviews on this place.”

Joonmyun faces him again, with his friendly, business smile. But the smile Jongdae throws back is a little crooked and curious. A cat-smile. The tips of his mouth curve up in a smooth semi-circle, reaching all the way to the corners of his lighted eyes.

“Well, I hope you’ll be able to add fuel to the fire,” Joonmyun replies, sliding on his latex gloves. He holds a hand out. “Do you have a design or would you like to look through some options?”

Jongdae shakes his head, and passes him the folder he has on his lap. “I’d like this, if you don’t mind.”

With a careful flip, Joonmyun opens the folder and stares at the page with wide eyes. An intricate mesh of designs weave in and out of each other—very well-drawn, but— “You—you want… _all_ of this?” He blinks up to meet Jongdae’s tilted expression. His features are handsome and sharp, Joonmyun notices. Pointed jaw lines, high cheekbones, lips that seem perpetually lifted in some playful inside joke.

“Yes, if you don’t mind,” answers Jongdae, steepling his thin fingers neatly in his lap. His feet dangle just the slightest off the chair, and he swings his legs back and forth patiently. Those pants are really too tight for his legs. “It _is_ possible, right?”

“Uh—well, I mean, yeah. Yes, of course,” Joonmyun clears his throat. “But this… the design is quite large. It’ll cover your whole backside.”

Jongdae nods insistently, his hair flopping as he does. The strands are a little curly, but sort of unnaturally so, as if remnants of a dying perm.

And Joonmyun should really not find that endearing, but well, he kind of does.

“Okay, then. You can lie down on your stomach and take your shirt off. I’ll start with some preliminary outlines,” Joonmyun explains, muttering partly to himself as he eyes his tattoo machines. He grabs an ink pen and some sanitary wipes. Jongdae does as he’s told, lifting his t-shirt over his head and placing it on the table. He lays face-down on the seat, shifting around a bit until he’s comfortable.

Joonmyun wheels his chair to the edge of the seat, eyeing the design in the folder before pressing the tip of his pen gently into Jongdae’s back. His skin is warm, Joonmyun can feel, even through the gloves. Jongdae shivers, ever so slightly and Joonmyun can’t help but laugh.

“You good?” he asks, pushing some hair out of his face with the back of his arm.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Jongdae exhales, sounding reassuringly fine, but there are still goosebumps popping up on his skin.

“Good, because this isn’t even the real tattoo-process yet,” Joonmyun says, in what he hopes is his comforting tone—the one he saves for anxious teenagers and the jittery ones with low pain tolerance. He waits for Jongdae’s goosebumps to disappear, then starts tracing the design out with his pen. “Is this your first tattoo?”

Jongdae hums, pensively. He’s lying down on his stomach but his head is turned on its side, hands tucked underneath his ear. Joonmyun catches a glimpse of his smile. “I have this tiny cross thing on my inner wrist, but I got it like, in college when I was kind of drunk so I don’t really remember it much.”

He doesn’t offer up an explanation for his current tattoo request, so Joonmyun doesn’t ask. Instead he works his way down Jongdae’s back, all the while trying to focus on Jongdae’s small-talk and not that his skin is super soft under the pen and that he’s gotten quite close to Jongdae’s butt which, Joonmyun realizes—totally objectively—that it is a rather nice butt and those damn skinny jeans are doing him great favours.

Jongdae is a chatter. Joonmyun indulges him because he likes when clients make conversation. “Are you the only artist here?”

Joonmyun rolls a cramp out of his wrist. “No, there’s also Yifan, an old friend of mine. And Jongin and Sehun, the other two you met at the entrance are apprentices,” he explains. “But they’ll be working as artists soon.”

“Apprentices, huh? That makes you sound kind of fancy.”

“Oh, I’m nothing special.”

Jongdae pauses, staring up at him through his long eyelashes. “Hmm. I’m inclined to disagree.” 

He doesn’t say anything after that, and Joonmyun coughs as he finishes his outline. “You can, uh, book your next appointment with Jongin outside.”

Jongdae throws him a grin, and slides off the seat. “Sure,” he says, with a little wave, swaying his hips.

Joonmyun watches him leave, hands still warm from Jongdae’s skin.

 

 

Summer comes hard and heavy in the following week—sunny and hot isn’t the perfect weather to get a tattoo, but the evenings are still busy. Jongin has his legs kicked up lazily on the front desk, arms stretching back with a yawn. The unimposing line tattoos on his bicep shift with his muscles, as Sehun flicks him in the forehead.

“No fighting, children,” Yifan scolds dryly, sweeping the floors. Joonmyun emerges from his room, poking his head out curiously.

“Jongin, when did you schedule Kim Jongdae to come in for his next session?”

“Uh,” Jongin consults the clock on the wall. “He should be here in like, ten minutes.”

“Oh. Okay.” Joonmyun disappears back to his station, and Yifan furrows his eyebrows.

Jongdae shows up fourteen minutes later, and not ten minutes later—not that Joonmyun had been counting—and he sets himself up similarly as last time, face down on the seat. He’s wearing a pair of light wash denim, ripped across the thigh and knees and Joonmyun stares at the pale skin beneath the fabric until Jongdae has taken his shirt off.

“This is a little—“ Jongdae’s breath hitches, a tiny sound at the back of his throat. Joonmyun wets his lips with a dry tongue and grips his tattoo machine tighter. “A little painful,” Jongdae finishes.

“Are you uncomfortable? I can stop.”

“No, no. It’s fine. We just started,” Jongdae says on an exhale. “That would be… embarrassing.”

Joonmyun chuckles a little. “I’d rather you tell me if you’re in pain, though.”

“I’ll get used to it, don’t worry. It just sort of… tingles?” Jongdae runs his tongue along his lip, tentatively.

“That’s true. You’ll adjust.”

The tattoo machine whirs back to life. Joonmyun can feel Jongdae tensing beneath it, but gradually, the tension dissipates and his muscles relax. Joonmyun’s wrist settles onto one of Jongdae’s backbones. Jongdae shivers a little, and Joonmyun swallows thickly in his throat.

“How old are you?” asks Jongdae.

“Twenty-seven.”

Jongdae makes a curious hum. “I’ll call you hyung, then.”

Joonmyun laughs lightly. He slides his chair across the room to grab a clean sponge. The summer humidity clings a little to his skin so he takes off his cardigan before sliding back into place. He catches Jongdae staring at him. 

Jongdae smiles once, and turns his head the other way.

“How about you? Still in college?” Joonmyun asks. He starts dabbing the sponge soothingly on the red skin.

“Finishing up soon,” replies Jongdae. His back muscles shift under the sponge, like some sort of moving pattern, and Joonmyun has to remind himself to keep working.

“What, uh, did you study?” he prompts. He picks up his tattoo machine again, letting it whir for a few seconds so Jongdae knows Joonmyun is going to be poking him again.

Jongdae tenses up once more before the needle is even on him. Joonmyun finds it sort of endearing, like the messy curls of his hair.

“Music theory and composition,” Jongdae says. His words are muffled slightly as he speaks with his cheek pressed against the seat.

Joonmyun isn’t too surprised. “You do seem like an artistic free spirit,” he offers.

Jongdae actually laughs, full and bright. His body shakes and Joonmyun has to pull his tattoo machine back for a moment. Jongdae twists his head, so he’s staring up at Joonmyun’s wide eyes.

“Hey, I’m not the tattoo artist here,” he counters, and Joonmyun studies the curve of his smile, and the way his long eyelashes hit his cheek as he winks.

Joonmyun licks his lips and shrugs. He glances at the design Jongdae had given him, massive and intricate and intensely detailed. His gloved hands tingle a little with the heat of Jongdae’s skin. He wonders, again, why Jongdae wants to cover up his whole back.

Then he wonders why the hell he is wondering. Jongdae is still staring at him as Joonmyun continues outlining.

“I wasn’t always doing this, though,” Joonmyun says.

Jongdae pauses. “Did you study anything in college?”

“Corporate business.”

“Well, that explains it.”

Joonmyun scrunches his nose. He looks down at Jongdae’s cat-smile. It’s back again; that strange, muted life that Jongdae has tucked away at the edges of his mouth. “Explains what?”

“You _look_ like you study corporate business,” says Jongdae.

Joonmyun scratches gently at his neck. “What, I’m not wearing a suit.”

“It’s not that,” Jongdae shakes his head. Or at least, Joonmyun thinks that that’s what he’s trying to do. It’s hard to tell when he’s laying down. Jongdae shifts so that his hands have folded up, and his head is resting on top of them. “I meant for a tattoo artist, you’re awfully well-groomed.”

Joonmyun rolls his eyes. Jongdae never really feels much younger than him, but stuff like this brings him down a few years, Joonmyun thinks. “I didn’t live up to the tattoo artist fantasy?” he jibes.

Jongdae gives him a cheeky look. “I implied that as a compliment, by the way.”

“‘Well-groomed’?” echoes Joonmyun. He sets down the tattoo machine and dabs again at the skin. The ink gleams beneath the red. Jongdae sits up suddenly.

“Yeah,” he says, swinging his feet over the side of the chair. Joonmyun glances at his collarbones before he tears his eyes away. Jongdae tilts his head to the side, curiously. A smile etches onto his expression. “Don’t worry. For some reason…” he pauses. “There’s something sexy about that too.”

He parts his legs. Joonmyun is sitting almost between them, knees brushing knees.

“Do you even have any tattoos?” Jongdae asks.

Joonmyun slips off his latex gloves. “Of course.”

“Where?”

He quirks an eyebrow. The real question Joonmyun had was why Jongdae was full of so many questions.

But then again, maybe Jongdae finds him just as interesting as Joonmyun finds Jongdae. Sly looks, light words, a smile that was open but unreadable.

“Secret,” Joonmyun tells him.

Jongdae leans back slowly on his hands. Joonmyun follows the shape of his torso as he moves. It’s small, but with angles just as sharp as the ones along his face. “I’ll take that as a challenge, then,” Jongdae replies.

Abruptly, he pushes himself forward, hunching his shoulders until he’s level with Joonmyun. Their breaths touch as Joonmyun exhales sharply.

“What?”

Jongdae’s eyes flash. “A challenge. I’ll find that tattoo of yours,” he says, bent smile sending a hot shiver down Joonmyun’s spine. “Wherever it is.”

 

 

The tattoo in question, by the way, is a string of words along the edges of Joonmyun’s collarbone. It’s his only tattoo, and he keeps it pretty well hidden. He’d gotten it done just after he’d left college, which was also around the time he met Yifan at a gay bar one night that they’d both been dragged to, and they’d been the only two sober people there.

The rest is sort of history. Joonmyun was able to start up a tattoo shop fairly easily. He opened it up with Yifan, Jongin and Sehun came a little later, and their high reputation followed.

Joonmyun doesn’t really show people the tattoo, mainly because most times he’s in the presence of other people, he has a shirt on. Only Yifan has seen it (minus the small handful of partners Joonmyun’s been with in the last few years), because Yifan was the one that had inked it on for him.

But maybe Joonmyun knew from the moment Jongdae had bent over and whispered against his lips, that Jongdae had really meant what he said.

At the end of their last session, Jongdae has Joonmyun pressed right up against the door.

“Found it,” he says, as he pulls down the neckline of Joonmyun’s shirt. “Told you I would.” He touches the ink lightly. “You know, this kind of makes you really hot.”

Maybe Joonmyun had known from the moment Jongdae walked in, that he would be all sorts of trouble.

“But I’m a bit disappointed,” Jongdae admits. “I was hoping I’d see one somewhere a little more scandalous.” He runs his hand down Joonmyun’s torso, even lower until it rests at the line of Joonmyun’s denim, just above the zipper.

There’s a little tug at the corner of his lip. Joonmyun leans forward and kisses it off his face before he changes his mind. When Jongdae moans softly under the press of their mouth, Joonmyun decides the kiss is worth it, and long overdue.

“Well, you’re welcome to search for any more secret tattoos,” Joonmyun says.

He hoists Jongdae up by the thighs. Jongdae hooks his legs around Joonmyun’s waist, hands still playing with the zipper of his pants. They stumble onto the tattoo chair, messy limbs and rough kisses.

As it turns out, he does end up searching Joonmyun’s body. Joonmyun lets him do a little bit more than search.


End file.
